Access the wisdom of your own bright heart

Everything Belongs

Ever since I went to this remarkable event, summer camp for “makers and world shakers”, I have been mulling the subject of belonging. Come to think of it, as long as I can remember, belonging has been the organizing theme of my life.

Looking for it. Yearning for it. Struggling for it. Working for it.

I think there’s a core wound in most of us around belonging. I sure feel it deeply.

I have sweet moments where I think maybe the medicine for the yearning is right there is the yearning. The medicine of knowing that this is a shared experience, this hunger to belong.

Maybe it comes from forgetting the capital “T” Truth of our oneness, our connectedness, our fundamental belonging to each other.

And maybe it’s good that it hurts, because the pain wakes us up so we remember the bigger truer thing.

These past couple of weeks though, I’ve been more in the forgetting and the hurt.

I don’t know why it happens this way. The ebb and flow of Life. Periods of expansive awareness followed by periods of constriction and self consciousness; fear.

I went to Camp GLP because I am learning to trust my inner sense of “yes“and follow its lead. I went to be around people who are successfully doing what I want to do; to learn. I went because last year I could only say to three people “I want to be a Life Coach” and now I am taking on clients. And I went because getting in the car alone and driving who knows where to meet a few hundred strangers sounded like an adventure.

In the couple of weeks before Camp though, some old health challenges cropped up. Insomnia, hormone wackiness, exhaustion, the persistent sense of being on the verge of getting sick.

I felt run down arriving at Camp and even though my bunk mates were incredibly lovely, being in a dorm didn’t help my sleep. Each day, I found myself feeling increasingly spent.

In spite of feeling a little off and out of it, the workshops were enlivening and the people were inspiring. Jonathan and Stephanie Fields, along with an incredible crew, created an atmosphere infused with openness, love, and generosity. Every time I turned around or sat down to a meal, I was engaged in a conversation with another open hearted, clear eyed soul.

And yet.

I felt like an observer more than an active participant.

I was disappointed in my flagging energy, in my experience, in myself.

Everywhere people seemed so loose and free and connected and I was in a place of just wanting to be alone and take a nap. Which I did.

Still, I felt a little locked up inside myself, a little constricted.

I went to a workshop on Saturday with this gorgeous woman, Robin Hallett. She was burning sage and smudged us as we walked in. There was sweet music playing. She made eye contact in a way that made me feel seen, deeply. I felt myself melt a little bit just walking in there. I’m so nourished by ritual, by spaces that feel holy.

Robin led us on a guided meditation to uncover our “one true thing”, as she calls it. That gift that we were born to offer to the world.

It was quite a powerful experience. I found myself filled up with yellow light, just filled with it. And I knew, with a decisiveness that is not my native way, that I am here to be a healer. That this is something I have always known.

Would I make a commitment to honor to this one true thing?, I heard Robin ask. In everything I did, no matter the cost?

I tell you truthfully that a part of me wanted so much to shut it down right there. To dismiss the whole thing as a little much, a little hokey, feel good mumbo jumbo.

I remembered how icky and off-putting I used to find it when people would describe themselves as “healers”.

“What the hell does that mean anyway?”, I’d think, “And who do you think you are to claim that title. How pretentious can you be?”

(How do you spell projection?)

I heard that fearful voice but I felt a million times more compelled by the radiance streaming through me.

When I stepped into that yellow light and bowed down to my one true thing, I felt a great heave of relief from the pushing.

Without realizing, I’d been pushing against my own ebbing energy. Pushing to connect while the getting was good. Pushing not to miss anything.

It all loosened up. Lots more room. The way felt wide again because I belonged to the Truth of myself.

And then I floated off on a cloud of belonging. The end.

Just kidding…

Since I got home, all these challenges are coming up to show me where I’m hanging on to beliefs that keep me small. To show me where I am pushing and struggling, still. A Course in Miracles teaches that love brings up anything unlike itself for healing.

It’s been a hard couple of weeks.

I can’t believe anymore that anything I would trade some part of myself for can be called love. I can’t believe that belonging means being chosen, being special, hustling. I can’t believe, not really, that love and belonging are things I could ever gain or loose.

Those old beliefs worked for a long time. They gave me a way to orient myself, to know if I was doing it right. Steering from the heart is disorienting and fresh, everything is new. The guardrails of good and bad are gone. The mile markers of external approval don’t point the way.

I’ve felt intensely misunderstood by someone I love. I’ve chosen to hold firm boundaries in the face of a lot of resistance and anger. Old victim stories are coming up. Fear of being too much. Feelings of sadness and loneliness. My kid is driving me bonkers and reminded me the other day, “You have no sense of humor, mom.”

I thanked that boy and told him he was right. I lost it. And maybe he could help me get it back.

I know I’ve told you that he is my best mirror and teacher. And he is now on a 24/7 mission to be either hilarious or impossible. It’s exhausting.

And perfect.

All of this is just right. I think I probably even chose it, the whole brilliant mess.

I’m so grateful for my coaches and my teachers and my dear ones and to you, you reading this. Thank you.

And I am immensely grateful to know and to trust my own healer’s heart.

I am here to be a force for healing. Maybe you are, too. Or maybe you are a visionary or an inventor or a thinker. Or maybe we are all some of everything.

I don’t know.

I do know that a big, huge part of the way I’m here to help is around this longing for love and belonging.

And that it’s my own wounding and mending and return to wholeness that allows me to see the wholeness in others.

Robin quotes the Gospel of Thomas in the article I linked to above:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”